Free Personal and Nursing Care, Scotland, 2021-22

Expenditure on Free Personal and Nursing Care

This section presents total expenditure for 2021-22 on FPNC payments to self-funding care home residents, and on personal care at home for people receiving Care at Home services.

In previous years, Local Financial Return 03 (LFR03) was the source of expenditure data for people aged 65 and over. However, expenditure data for those aged 18 to 64 presented within the Extension to Free Personal Care publication was from the Quarterly Monitoring Return.

To allow for consistent methodology to be used throughout this publication, which brings together data for those aged 18 to 64 and those aged 65 and over together for the first time, expenditure figures for those aged 65 and over are now taken from the Quarterly Monitoring Return:

• care homes: expenditure is estimated by multiplying the number of persons receiving each payment, as provided in the return, by the weekly FPC or FNC payment amount set for that financial year (please see the Payments section)
• care at home: weekly figures are directly provided by Local Authorities within the Quarterly Monitoring Return

Expenditure data for those aged 65 and over now being derived from the Quarterly Return means that activity and expenditure data is now aligned to the same timeframe and source for both age groups. This also means that estimated expenditure figures for those aged 65 and over are not directly comparable to figures from previous years due to the change in source. Estimates of overhead costs are no longer produced following this change. Please see the Limitations section for more information.

Comparable information on total expenditure for care homes and Care at Home services is not provided within the Quarterly Return. Expenditure estimates from this source are not available, however total expenditure is still available in LFR03 returns, published as part of the Scottish Local Government Financial Statistics publication.

The source of expenditure figures for those aged 18 to 64 is also the Quarterly Monitoring Return, and has not changed from the Extension to Free Personal Care publication. While there are small differences in methodology in producing annual figures, figures are broadly comparable between these two publications.

Please see the Methods section of this publication for more information about how the figures from the Quarterly Monitoring Return are processed, and the Limitations section for further information on comparability.

Care Homes

Expenditure data on FPC and FNC payments relate to self-funding residents in care homes only.

Age 65 and over

In 2021-22, expenditure by Local Authorities on FPNC payments to self-funding Care Home residents aged 65 and over is estimated to have totalled £139 million.

Around £107 million of total expenditure on payments for those aged 65 and over in care homes (77% of total expenditure) was spent on FPC payments in 2021-22, and around £32 million (23%) on FNC.

Age 18 to 64

Expenditure on FPNC payments to self-funding care home residents aged 18 to 64 totalled £1.7 million in 2021-22. £1.3 million of this (79%) was spent by Local Authorities on FPC payments for those aged 18 to 64 in 2021-22. This represents a 24% increase from £1.1 million in 2020-21, and an overall increase of 66% from £789,000 in Q4 of 2018-19, just prior to the extension of FPC to this age group.

£350,000 (21%) was spent on FNC payments to self-funding residents aged 18 to 64 in 2021-22  (trend comparison not available, please see Understanding the Statistics in this Report).

Full data are available in the accompanying tables.

Care at Home

In 2021-22, the estimated amount spent by the 29 Local Authorities able to submit data (all apart from Fife, Scottish Borders and South Ayrshire) on providing personal care services to people aged 65 and over in their own home was £417 million. Data for previous years is from LFR03 returns, and is not comparable with this Quarterly Monitoring Return figure for 2021-22.

Also in 2021-22, the estimated amount spent by the same 29 Local Authorities on providing free personal care services to people aged 18 to 64 in their own home was £237 million. This is an increase of 12% from 2020-21 (£213 million) and an increase of 33% since 2018-19 (£179 million) (as derived from previous Quarterly Monitoring Returns).

Full data are available in the accompanying tables.